The REAL value of being your own boss.

I prattle on about the work/life balance a Hell of a lot because it’s really important to me.

I could earn more money than I do, but I spent yesterday (which was a normal monday) teaching my kids how to gently take snails off the plants they were eating and put them into the compost bin instead. (If ‘friends of the gastropods’ are reading this just be thankful I didn’t have some garlic butter to hand).

We ate ice cream, had a few tantrums and kicked a ball about. It was wonderful.

This morning I popped into the dentist to make a check-up appointment and the receptionist seemed clearly surprised when I replied ‘anytime’ to the question ‘when are you free next week?’

Being a full time internet marketer allows me to do both the above – my work life balance is wonderful and I’m thankful for it.

But very recently I heard something that brought home to me the REAL freedom that not working for a boss brings.

Some friends told me about friends of theirs who’d been on a protest march about something very important to them, and although the event had passed peacefully the police arrived and threatened the protestors with arrest if they didn’t disperse immediately.

Now from what I’m told these guys aren’t scared by much – they’ve had run in’s with pretty violent factions who don’t share their views and have put themselves in dangerous situations to get their views across but they left the scene immediately when the words ‘arrest’ and ‘criminal record’ were mentioned.

Why?

Because they could lose their jobs if their employers found out.

I once watched in amazement as a schoolteacher jumped out of a car, ran across a busy motorway and then climbed over several gardens to escape what he thought was a ‘police bust’ when a car we were in got stopped by the police, and he knew there was a half smoked joint in the ashtray.

Turns out the police stopped us about wobbly exhaust pipe, were very nice about the matter, even told us where we could get it fixed cheaply and didn’t seem to care a fig about the contents of the car ashtray.

You’re seeing what I’m getting at?

People are brave, principled, wonderful people who will stand in front of tanks, take on fascists and put their names to petitions that could in effect threaten their safety, but threaten them with losing their jobs and they crumble like naughty schoolchildren.

And I fully understand why – usually it’s not about themselves, rather being able to care for and support their families and as a husband and dad I fully agree with them. But there’s no sense of freedom like that of being your own person in a world full of employees. It’s like realising you’re the biggest chap on the nudist beach!

You instantly go from passive to active. You don’t ASK for a pay rise when you work for yourself, you GENERATE extra income. You don’t REQUEST time off to go on holiday, you DECIDE to take a break.

I know how uncomfortable this may be for some people to read – bloody hell it’s hard enough to write without sounding like a smug arsehole, but it’s FACT. Your marketing business – your online business – can give you so much more than just time and money (although that’s a good start), it can also give you BACK a piece of yourself that you’ve already handed over to your boss without realising it.

Think about this – booking time off, asking for a pay rise, asking for half a day off work to go and watch your kids run in the schools sports day or because you know you’ll be hungover after three days at Glastonbury festival, or wanting to be in France for the Cherry festival or to spend the day in bed with your wife (or someone else’s) or whatever the Hell you just feel like doing when you wake up in the morning.

These are things you can’t ‘just do’ when you work for somebody else. Or if you do, then not for long before they sack you.

Yes this is another nag guys – get your online business up and running as quickly as you can ……….because the days they ticketh away at a frighteningly rapid rate, and while you’d be naturally delighted to marry a Spanish supermodel on your 92nd birthday, you might from time to time wonder why you couldn’t have met her in your twenties while you could still do 100 pushups.